Rating: 
Summary: A former Nanny speaks
Review: The book is so true to life I believe many socialites with trophy children will be squirming! HOWEVER, I felt a little miffed at the end. I felt that 2 former Nannies could have done better! Giving Mrs. X a hard slap in the face would have appeased me! Otherwise it was a good read. I read it all in one day because I just could not put it down. That damn ending is why it only gets 3 starts from me.
Rating: 
Summary: One definite good thing
Review: The only thing that saves the ending from being a complete downer is the escape of the puppy from the X household. Too bad the child couldn't also escape.
Rating:
Summary: Great Fast Read
Review: I was up til 3 am finishing this book. If you have ever lived in ny you will relate to this book or at least find it funny. You get the inside view on the nanny world in nyc, via Nanny, a college student who is working as a nanny parttime to get some $ to pay rent and etc. I would say more but i don't want to ruin the book.
Rating: 
Summary: good mom bad mom
Review: I became very freindly with a nanny in my neighborhood who I did not even know was a nanny until I met the real mom at kindergarten sign up night. Everywhere I went with my kids the nanny was there too: skating lessons, swimming lessons, park adventures, library, book store children's hour, dance and swim competition. I never even thought she looked too young to be the mom to these three kids becasue in this day and time, one never knows. One day we went to the school to play on the swings and the monkey bars and she was there. We talked a little and went our seperate ways. In walking back home, we finally realized we lived only a few blocks away from each other. After that, my kids went over to their house and vice versa. When it was time to register my oldest at kindergarten, the girls were there but a new person was with them. I asked where the mom was and the real mom said, "Oh, I'm the mom; she is the nanny." I was floored to say the least. Of course I was very interested in what in the heck could possibly keep her away from her children for 12 or so hours a day...she was a doctor. As I grew into a relationship with the nanny, everything unfolded and made much more sense. Not only was the real mom a doctor but so was the dad. The tales in this book are right in line with what nanny "Jane" (not real name) told me. We would sit for hours while the kids played and I would listen in disbelief of daily activities that took place in millions of households across the nation. This was her seventh position as a nanny and she had lived in various areas trying to stay at least for two years in each household. Her freinds were nannies and their friends were nannies. When I read the book I thought Jane had surely been one of the authors. More than anything else, it breaks my heart that people like this have children and allow others to raise them. In turn, they miss most of the more meaningful and powerful bonding opportunities in life, especially with young children. It made me feel like a good mom because I had put my career on hold and made the working moms all bad moms. I have since learned a valuable lesson: all mothers are working mothers. Some choose to work outside the home and many need to do so out of having no other options. I have now met many nannies and many working moms. Some of them are good (most are good) but like the Nanny Diaries describe in this book, many just don't realize that it is the small daily things that count the most in life. Kids remember who was there when they threw up all over the kitchen floor, how it was handled, when it was done, what happened next and why their mom was not there. Sometimes, when I asked the little girls if they wanted to come over and play, they would say, "Jane will go home in one hour, can we come over after she leaves or, can we come now and bring her and stay over after she leaves?" This shouted volumes to me of who they would rather be around and I was amazed at first but eventually got used to the idea. The Nanny Diaries may be writen as a novel but it is very true
and will hopefully open the eyes of all parents before they have children and decide to hire someone else to do the most important job ever. Another book which tells moms straight away that they should take care of home life first is Mommy-CEO, Revised Edition, by syndicated family columnist, Jodie Lynn. It is not about being a mommy and a business CEO - it is about leadership roles in the household in taking care of your children. The combination of these two books will bring crystal clear meaning behind the reasoning of why children must come first. Many readers may feel picked on or beaten upon from the two books. Don't be fooled...every parent, male or female - working or working from or at home, will benefit in the long run. In fact, there are seven doctors in Mommy-CEO, Revised Edition (2001)- and they answer parenting concerns from a mom's heartfelt experience and the male docs do too. I'm glad both books were written as they are and hope each one is in every household in the nation as children deserve to be the main focus.
Rating:
Summary: I Felt Like a Voyeur
Review: I began this book on Saturday night. It's Monday and I'm almost done. It's an addicting book - not a literary masterpiece, but well written, funny, and affecting. You want to strangle Grayer and his friends, especially Darwin. However, when you see the cold and unchildfriendly surroundings in which they live, you can understand why they act as such. Their parents should have been spayed and neutered for being such cold self-absorbing idiots. Then you see the other side: the wacked out trophy wife with whom Grayer and Nan have a disastrous play date. While this book is supposed to make you feel for Nanny, I don't. Hate to say it but if my employer ever made me feel like dirt, I'd vote with my feet. ... Yes, you feel sorry for the children - the ultimate losers in the game. The parents look at him as a possession: a Park Avenue coop, Manolo Blahnik shoes, five Hermes Kelly bags, membership in the NYAC, Sulka shirts, Santoni shoes, son who goes to All Souls Nursery School, daughter at Spence, stepchild at Wharton, etc. ... I enjoyed the book, look forward to the movie, and the sequel. ...
Rating: 
Summary: Editing Gone Wrong!
Review: I purchased this book based on the entire hub hub surrounding it. I just finished the book last night and must say I am sadly disappointed. The plot is very disjointed especially concerning the supposed boyfriend although how they went from hating each other to being serious is beyond me. The editors did a poor job of making a potentially great story very weak. There were too many plot assumptions made and for that I wouldn't recommend it!
Rating:
Summary: good read, not great!
Review: Surviving my own experience as a nanny, I was anxious to read "The Nanny Diaries". While I found some great truthes in the relationship between Nanny and Mr. and Mrs. X, (being smushed in a car with screaming kids while seemingly being ignored by the "adults" in the car was priceless) I felt the characters onesided and harsh. Though we see cracks in the crust of Mrs. X, I never really cared about her or Nanny. I did cry over the lack of a daddy for the little boy. I spent many days and nights nursing hurts, loving as though they were my own, and Nanny showed the deep cracks and differences between caring for and owning a child as the X's did. Its a good traveling book, because thinking is an option. Its truth and humor and I'll admit some tears. Childcare workers will see themselves in it, but outsiders might wonder what evil parents exist in big cities and why no one does anything to stop them.
Rating:
Summary: Good premise spoiled by poor execution
Review: Too bad these nannnies are treading on Tom Wolfe turf; they might have added to his unbelievably-bad-behavior-of-the -upper-east-side-noveau-riche genre if they weren't such awfully bad writers. Any momentum the story has, in the compelling character of the little boy and his neurotic mother, is dissipated by a tepid romance subplot and dull visits to Nanny's smugly perfect family. It doesn't help that errors are frequent: it's Dorian's, not Dorrian's, and Mattel, not Matel. A good copy editor would have helped, but a rewrite by a skilled ghost writer might have been even more usueful.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful and Wicked
Review: I read this book over two days as I was stuck in bed with a cold. The medicine I was on did not help me feel better, but this book did. What a terrific read. It goes fast, but hits all the right notes. Nanny is wonderful character--a welcome change from many of the current novels about young single women in the city, she is not like Ally McBeal or Bridget Jones. Sure, she has a few flaws...but accepts them. She is caring and delightful woman. Mrs. X is an accurate look at a special kind of woman (and the same is true of Mr.X) that you only find in New York. The tone is pitch perfect. I found myself thinking of Sherman McCoy a bit. If Bonfire of the Vanities had taken a different turn, the McCoys might have hired Nanny. A rare book that captures the zeitgeist perfectly. It is well worth all the hype.
Rating:
Summary: The Masochist Diaries
Review: This book could have been so much better. I can tell because parts of it are pure genius. Unfortunately, most of it is dull and repetitive. It seemed like one long anecdote about how "nanny" puts up with absolutely inhuman treatment by her employers, supposedly because she needs the $10/hour, and is hopelessly attached to their 4 yr old. She's a child development major, but can't figure out that developing a maternal attachment to a child she only plans on knowing a year or two at the most, is going to do more damage than good? Yes the insanely wealthy couple she works for are evil to the point of absurdity, and i feel sorry for their child, but Nanny isn't doing anyone any good either. the only thing that could have salvaged some of her integrity is pure, uninhibited revenge for the many transgressions of mrs. X. And, what's with her roommate situation? is Nanny deliberately seeking out abusive and heartless people, so she can react with inner rage and outer passivity? There are some very strange dynamics going on in her own relationships. This should have been called "the masochist diaries".
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